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The Sin of Omission

My 30th anthology came out a little over a month ago. It is a high profile book. I have enjoyed the PR immensely. But. A minority of the articles about the book mysteriously forget to mention my name even though it is on the cover, the title page, and the spine as specified by my contract.

For the first three or four, I ignored the omission and cheerfully retweeted mentions of the offending articles. I have been good humored. But The Chronicle of Higher Education should know better.

Continue reading "The Sin of Omission" »


Driving around Vermont, Thinking

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photo by Tony Hisgett

Friday and Saturday, I spent a lot of time driving around Vermont. I also spent a lot of time thinking while driving. I was thinking about whether to expand on my most recent blog post and what it is safe to say. These were the most beautiful drives I have ever taken in Vermont.

The leaves were at peak and the air was still, so there were many reflections. (Unfortunatly, I didn't stop to take pictures.)

Continue reading "Driving around Vermont, Thinking" »


Give Peace a Chance: My Return to Blogging

I have decided to come back to blogging. I am returning at a point of happiness and strength with a new book out which is successful in ways I had never imagined an anthology could be. I have been having an amazing time these past few weeks.

I find that I have made my decision to resume just at the moment when Kathy Sierra's blog post Why the Trolls Will Always Win, commemorating ten years of over-the-top harassment, is published in Wired

Continue reading "Give Peace a Chance: My Return to Blogging" »


An unexpected day in Boston

The trip to California was exciting and its hard to know where to start. We launched Hieroglyph on September 10th in Silicon Valley to a very enthusiastic reception. We did authors@google at lunchtime and then had a sold out panel discussion at Kepler's in Menlo Park. Our event in LA was also sold out.

Here I am in the cab on the way to LAX early yesterday morning. (Though not early enough!)

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I had an unexpected overnight in Boston because I missed my connecting flight. So I did the obvious thing: I went to bookstores.

At the Brookline Booksmith, not only did they have Hieroglyph on the regular shelves in the SF section, the also had a pile of them towards the front with some very interesting books.

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Then we went to the Harvard Bookstore where they were displayed by the cash register. I signed a pile of them. I also stopped in at the Harvard Coop, where they had some.

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(You can tell this was fun!) Special thanks to mystery writer Sarah Smith for putting me up last night, and to Mark Berstein, Eastgate Systems Chief Scientist, for driving me around to book stores and feeding me brunch, and then delivering me to the airport, and also to Ted Cornell for getting my kids off to school this morning and picking me up at the Plattsburgh Airport.

There are many more people I need to thank. That list will be long.


My Hieroglyph Tour Blog is at Goodreads

I have been blogging about my book tour, what I have been referring to as the Hieroglyph Roadshow, on my Goodreads Author page. One of the fun things about this tour so far is fan-created Hieroglyph things. This photo collage from our authors@Google event was created by D. Simerly. Image
And we've also now got a Hieroglyph cat meme, created by someone who went to the Kepler's event. Image

Please send me more!


HIEROGLYPH Tour Schedule

ImageThe Hieroglyph tour may be coming to your town. Here are the tour dates so far. Watch this space. I will post more dates.

  • September 10: Menlo Park, CA, Kepler's Books, 1010 El Camino Real, 7:30 PM. Order tickets online. Techno-optimism: Neal Stephenson and friends. Panelists include Neal Stephenson, Annalee Newitz, Rudy Rucker, Keith Hjelmstad, Charlie Jane Anders and editors Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer.
  • September 15: Los Angeles, Zocalo Public Square at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave., 7:30 PM. Can Science Fiction Revolutionize Science? Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson and Arizona State University physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, both of whom contributed to the new anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, visit Zócalo to discuss whether science fiction can truly change contemporary science, and what the alternative futures we imagine mean for present-day innovation. Make a reservation.
  • September 30, New York City: Project Hieroglyph: Book Launch and Celebration sponsored by Tumblr and ASU Center for Science and the Imagination, featuring Madeline Ashby & Elizabeth Bear, Tuesday, September 30, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. The event is free, but preregistration on Eventbrite is required.
  • October 2, Washinton, DCCan We Imagine Our Way to a Better Future? It’s 2014 and we have no flying cars, no Mars colonies, no needleless injections, and yet plenty of smartphone dating apps. Is our science fiction to blame if we find today’s science and technology less than dazzling? Inspired by Neal Stephenson’s 2011 article, “Innovation Starvation,” in which he argues that science fiction is failing to supply our scientists and engineers with inspiration, and the new anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, this event will explore a more ambitious narrative about what’s coming. From the tales we tell about robots and drones, to the narratives on the cutting edge of neuroscience, to society’s view of its most intractable problems, we need to begin telling a new set of stories about ourselves and the future. URL TBA.
  • October 3-5, Ottawa: Can-Con - Kathryn Cramer & Madeline Ashby.
  • October 22, Phoenix, Arizona: Changing Hands Bookstore, 7PM at the Cresent Ballroom. Tickets, which require a book purchase, required for admission. Visit the Changing Hands website for more information and to purchase tickets. Project Hieroglyph science fiction authors, scientists, engineers, and other experts share their ambitious, optimistic visions of the near future. Presenters will include science fiction author and essayist Madeline Ashby (Machine Dynasty series), Aurora Award winner Karl Schroeder (Lockstep), Clarke Award finalist Kathleen Ann Goonan (Queen City Jazz), Zygote Games founder James L. Cambias (A Darkling Sea), acclaimed cosmologist and astrobiologist Paul Davies (The Eerie Silence), science fiction and fantasy anthologist Kathryn Cramer (Year’s Best SF), ASU Center for Science and the Imagination director Ed Finn, and legendary Locus, Nebula, and Hugo award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson (2312 and Red Mars). 
  • October 26, SeattleNeal Stephenson and Cory Doctorow: Reigniting Society’s Ambition with Science Fiction. Tickets available here.

More events TBA.


Reading the Hieroglyphs

From Jim Cambias:
The Hieroglyph anthology gets its official release September 9, and the publishers are leaking some teaser material. You can go here to read a preview of the e-book version on Scribd. Or you can download a PDF excerpt here, including the introduction by Lawrence Krauss and the essay "Innovation Starvation" by Neal Stephenson which inspired the whole thing.

via www.jamescambias.com


HIEROGLYPH in Hardcover!

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My first copy of my new book HIEROGLYPH came in the mail. The publication date is September 9th. Image
I co-edited the book with Ed Finn of Arizona State University's Center for Science & the Imagination. Project Hieroglyph was launched by Neal Stephenson. Contributors include: Charlie Jane Anders, Madeline Ashby, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, James Cambias, Brenda Cooper, Cory Doctorow, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Lee Konstantinou, Lawrence M. Krauss, Geoffrey A. Landis, Annalee Newitz, Rudy Rucker, Karl Schroeder, Vandanah Singh, Neal Stephenson, and Bruce Sterling. You can pre-order your copy here! 😎

Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future

Hiero_HC_c28My new book, Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, is coming out in September. I co-edited the book with Ed Finn of Arizona State University's Center for Science & the Imagination. Project Hieroglyph was launched by Neal Stephenson.

Contributors include: Charlie Jane Anders, Madeline Ashby, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, James Cambias, Brenda Cooper, Cory Doctorow, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Lee Konstantinou, Lawrence M. Krauss, Geoffrey A. Landis, Annalee Newitz, Rudy Rucker, Karl Schroeder, Vandanah Singh, Neal Stephenson, and Bruce Sterling.


Year's Best SF 17 (2012), ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer Table of Contents

Year's Best SF 17 cover

Here is the table of contents for our Year's Best SF 17, forthcoming from HarperCollins this summer:

The Best Science Fiction of the Year Three • Ken MacLeod 

Dolly • Elizabeth Bear

Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer • Ken Liu

Tethered • Mercurio Rivera

Wahala • Nnedi Okorafor

Laika’s Ghost • Karl Schroeder

Ragnarok • Paul Park

Six Months, Three Days • Charlie Jane Anders

And Weep Like Alexander • Neil Gaiman

The Middle of Somewhere • Judith Moffett

Mercies • Gregory Benford

The Education of Junior Number 12 • Madeline Ashby

Our Candidate • Robert Reed

Thick Water • Karen Heuler

The War Artist • Tony Ballantyne

The Master of the Aviary • Bruce Sterling

Home Sweet Bi’Ome • Pat MacEwan

For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Lonliness and I’ll Not Be Back Again • Michael Swanwick

The Ki-anna • Gwyneth Jones

Eliot Wrote • Nancy Kress

The Nearest Thing • Genevieve Valentine

The Vector Alphabet of Intersellar Travel • Yoon Ha Lee

The Ice Owl • Carolyn Ives Gilman

 


Year's Best Fantasy 10 Table of Contents

I am pleased to announce the table of contents for Year's Best Fantasy 10 edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, forthcoming from Tor.com.

Dragon’s Deep · Cecelia Holland

The Green Bird · Kage Baker

Dulce Domum · Ellen Kushner

The Parable of the Shower · Leah Bobet

The Dragaman’s Bride · Andy Duncan

Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela · Saladin Ahmed

Images of Anna · Nancy Kress

Icarus Saved from the Skies · Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown · Holly Black

The Score · Alaya Dawn Johnson

Sleight of Hand · Peter S. Beagle

Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva · James Morrow

A Delicate Architecture · Catherynne M. Valente

Swell · Elizabeth Bear

The Bones of Giants · Yoon Ha Lee

The Minuteman’s Witch · Charles Coleman Finlay

Conquistador del la Noche · Carrie Vaughn

Winterborn · Liz Williams

Three Twilight Tales · Jo Walton

Power and Magic · Marly Youmans

The Avenger of Love · Jack Skillingstead

The Persistence of Souls · Sarah Zettel

An Invocation of Incuriosity · Neil Gaiman

Three Friends · Claude Lalumière

Shadow of the Valley · Fred Chappel

Technicolor · John Langan

Economancer · Carolyn Ives Gilman


Year’s Best SF 16 edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer: Table of contents

Year's Best SF 16 cover

Sleeping Dogs • Joe Haldeman

Castoff World • Kay Kenyon

Petopia  • Benjamin Crowell

Futures in the Memory Market  • Nina Kiriki Hoffman 

A Preliminary Assessment of the Drake Equation, Being an Excerpt From the Memoirs of Star Captain Y.-T. Lee • Vernor Vinge

About It • Terry Bisson

Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra  • Vandana Singh 

Under the Moons of Venus  • Damien Broderick

All the Love in the World  • Cat Sparks

At Budokan • Alastair Reynolds

Graffiti in the Library of Babel  • David Langford 

Steadfast Castle • Michael Swanwick

How to Become a Mars Overlord  • Catherynne M. Valente

To Hie from Far Cilenia • Karl Schroeder

The Hebras And The Demons And The Damned  • Brenda Cooper 

Penumbra  • Gregory Benford

The Good Hand  • Robert Reed

The Cassandra Project  • Jack McDevitt 

Jackie’s Boy  • Stephen Popkes

Eight Miles • Sean McMullen

Ghosts Doing  the Orange Dance (The Parke Family Scrapbook Number IV) • Paul Park

We think the book will be out from HarperCollins in May. It is available for pre-order from Amazon.


Year's Best SF 15 table of contents

SN850389Year's Best SF 15, ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, is forthcoming from HarperCollins this summer and is available for pre-order from the publisher.

Table of Contents

Vandana Singh • Infinities

Robert Charles Wilson • This Peaceable Land; or the Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beacher Stowe

Yoon Ha Lee • The Unstrung Zither

Bruce Sterling • Black Swan

Nancy Kress • Exegesis

Ian Creasey • Erosion

Gwyneth Jones • Collision

Gene Wolfe • Donovan Sent Me

Marissa K. Lingen • The Calculus Plague

Peter Watts • The Island

Paul Cornell • One of Our Bastards Is Missing

Sarah L. Edwards • Lady of the White-Spired City

Brian Stableford • The Highway Code

Peter M. Ball • On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War Machines of the Merfolk

Alastair Reynolds • The Fixation

Brenda Cooper • In Our Garden

Geoff Ryman • Blocked

Michael Cassut • The Last Apostle

Charles Oberndorf • Another Life

Mary Robinette Kowal • The Consciousness Problem

Stephen Baxter • Tempest 43

Genevieve Valentine • Bespoke

Eric James Stone • Attitude Adjustment

Chris Roberson • Edison's Frankenstein


Wall Street weighs in on Amazon, declares Borders the winner: AMZN off 5.21%; BPG up 10.47%

Apparently, Wall Street was not amused by Amazon's fight with Macmillan USA. A bunch of the financial articles attribute the Amazon fall to expectations that e-book prices would rise. But that strikes me as nonsense. If that's true, why the big rise in Borders? Perhaps because some think that Amazon is not the future of online retailing and are looking for alternatives?

From Google Finance:

AmazonOff

AMZN Amazon.com, Inc. 118.87 -6.54 -5.21%    

BKS Barnes & Noble, Inc. 18.00 +0.52 2.97%

BGP Borders Group, Inc. 0.950 +0.090 10.47%

BAMM Books-A-Million, Inc. 6.51 +0.14 2.20%

AAPL Apple Inc. 194.43 +2.37 1.23%


Now that Amazon has conceded, can they please fix the damage?

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I really don't like the 404-Document Not Found message where the Amazon page for the Kindle edition of our Year's Best Fantasy 9 is supposed to be

(Amazon's poorly worded concession in the Amazon-Macmillan dispute is here.)

As I said, I personally don't buy e-books. Nor do I own an e-book reader. But this particular book was intended to be published as a book where the e-book edition is primary.


John Sargent's address to authors about the Amazon situation

This ran as a paid advertisement in a special Saturday edition of Publishers Lunch:

To: All Macmillan authors/illustrators and the literary agent community
From: John Sargent

This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.

I regret that we have reached this impasse. Amazon has been a valuable customer for a long time, and it is my great hope that they will continue to be in the very near future. They have been a great innovator in our industry, and I suspect they will continue to be for decades to come.

It is those decades that concern me now, as I am sure they concern you. In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated.

Continue reading "John Sargent's address to authors about the Amazon situation" »


Year's Best Fantasy 9, ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, part 6 on Tor.com

Tor.com has put up the 6th installment of our Year's Best Fantasy 9:

Segment number six features the following stories:

“Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake” by Naomi Novik 
“If Angels Fight” by Richard Bowes 
“Queen of the Sunlit Shore” by Liz Williams 

Registered users, download it here


Year's Best Fantasy 9, parts 2 & 3, available for free download from Tor.com

Part 2:

Year’s Best Fantasy 9, Part two

PABLO DEFENDINI

Earlier this year, Tor.com debuted as an imprint independent from Tor Books by publishing Year’s Best Fantasy 9, David G. Hartwell’s and Kathryn Cramer’s definitive anthology of fantastical stories.

While YBF9 is still available as a print-on demand edition, and you can buy your very own print copy at our store, we’re posting segments of the anthology on Tor.com, for your reading pleasure. Each of these segments feature three or four stories from the anthology, and are available to all registered users of Tor.com. It’s a great way to sample some of the content in the book before deciding to part with your hard-earned cash, or of simply getting a shorter dose of wonder and the fantastical.

Segment number two features the following stories:

“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear 
“From the Clay of His Heart” by John Brown
“The Olverung” by Stephen Woodworth 

Registered users, download it here

Part 3:

Segment number three features the following stories:

“The Rabbi’s Hobby” by Peter S. Beagle 
“26 Monkeys and the Abyss” by Kij Johnson 
“Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita” by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald 

Registered users, download it here


Tor.com posting free downloads of stories from our Year's Best Fantasy 9

From Tor.com:

Earlier this year, Tor.com debuted as an imprint independent from Tor Books bypublishing Year’s Best Fantasy 9, David G. Hartwell’s and Kathryn Cramer’s definitive anthology of fantastical stories.

While YBF9 is still available as a print-on demand edition, and you can buy your very own print copy at the Tor.com Print Book Store, starting today, and once a week for the following eight weeks, we’ll be posting segments of the anthology on Tor.com as a PDF, for your reading pleasure.

Each of these segments will feature three or four stories from the anthology, and will be available to all registered users of Tor.com. It’s a great way to sample some of the content in the book before deciding to part with your hard-earned cash, or of simply getting a shorter dose of wonder and the fantastical.

Our first segment features the following stories:

“Dalthree” by Jeffrey Ford 
“The Salting and Canning of Benevolence D.” by Al Michaud
“Reader’s Guide” by Lisa Goldstein 

Also, something I should have mentioned a while back: Nigel Beale has posted the podcast of his interview with David Hartwell and me.


Year's Best SF 13 gets a second printing

YBSF 13 cover

I'm sifting through my mail pile in Pleasantville this morning, and I find a letter from Will Hinton at Harper Eos saying that Year's Best SF 13 has just gone into a second printing. It is really great to get a letter from one's publisher that ends "Congratulations on your continued success!", especially in the current publishing environment.

Yay book! Sell! Sell! Sell!


Hartwell & Cramer Year's Best Fantasy 9 is in print!

OurYear's Best Fantasy 9 is now in print from Tor.com. We are their first book in a bleeding edge  experiment to publish SF in new ways. (The primary edition of the book is intended to be the digital, however I think that edition has not yet emerged from Ingram's system.)

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I was at the University Bookstore in Seattle yesterday. (In case you are wondering, Duane Wilkins and I are both standing up. He is that much taller than me. Photo by my brother John G. Cramer, III.)


David Hartwell interview for Clarion West at the University Bookstore

Eileen Gunn interviewed David Hartwell last night as part of the Clarion West reading series, held this year at the University Bookstore. 

John D. Berry took most of the photos of the actual event, since I was sitting up front with David and with Eilleen Gunn, the interviewer. The main photoset is HERE.

University Bookstore

Duane Wilkins introduces the event

singing teen angel

David Hartwell opens by singing the first verse of "Teen Angel."

Eileen Gunn

Eileen Gunn

David Hartwell & Eileen Gunn

David Hartwell & Eileen Gunn

audience

the audience

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Kathryn Cramer & David Hartwell

at the Continental

at the Continental afterwards

JT Stewart & David Hartwell

JT Stewart, Clarion West co-founder, & David Hartwell

sitting around afterwards

sitting around afterwards